While it's not always easy to identify, some signs of countertransference might include your therapist seeming unusually emotional about your situations, sharing too much personal information, or consistently steering conversations in a particular direction.
An example of this is a client feeling as though their therapist is judging them, similarly to how they feel judged by a parent. The client then withdraws and becomes difficult to deal with, exactly how they behave toward a parent they are not on good terms with.
Signs of therapist countertransference
Having an excessively critical attitude toward you. Becoming overly invested in your situation. Providing strong judgments on situations and people in your life, independent of your own opinions. Becoming prescriptive with advice instead of letting you arrive at decisions on your ...
Signs of Transference in Therapy
Biases: One person irrationally dislikes the other or makes unfair assumptions. Strong emotional reactions: An individual blows up at another for seemingly no reason, implying that they have buried feelings toward another person.
Transference is what happens when you transfer the feelings you have toward or about someone else, usually a parent, onto your therapist. It's a normal and natural part of the therapeutic process and good therapists know how to recognize and work with it.
If a therapist is having trouble preventing or managing countertransference with a particular patient, they need to put the patient first. If the client would benefit from a provider who is better prepared to engage with that individual, then the therapist should refer their client out to a different provider.
Explanation: Among the behaviors listed, overprotecting or rejecting a client might be indicative of a countertransference reaction. Countertransference occurs when a therapist projects their own unresolved feelings, which can originate from their personal experiences, onto the client.
Countertransference is a common, unconscious phenomenon that can negatively impact the therapeutic relationship if not properly addressed.
Immediate and nonimmediate self-disclosure both have potential to deepen the alliance and promote client wellness. That said, there can also be negative effects of indiscriminate self-disclosure. The litmus test of whether or not to engage in self-disclosure is to do so only when it will be therapeutic for the client.
Countertransference can manifest in various ways within the therapeutic setting. It may involve the therapist experiencing strong positive or negative emotions towards the client, feeling overly sympathetic or critical, or even developing personal biases.
Unhealthy attachments between therapist and client can occur when the lines of the therapeutic relationship become blurred. This can happen when the client overly depends on the therapist for emotional support, or when the therapist starts to have personal feelings towards the client outside of the therapeutic context.
Countertransference is when the therapist's subconscious emotional reaction to the individual they're helping influences their professional judgement or response.
Positive countertransference might be characterized by intense liking/loving of the patient, desire to be with the patient, and the idealization of the patient's efforts in psychotherapy. Erotic countertransference is a common manifestation, as is an intense maternal countertransference.
Countertransference refers to the totality of (unconscious) reactions of the therapist to the client and to the clients' transference in therapy [7]. Through that concept, the focus is shifted from the client onto the therapist and his/her powerful feelings, which can arise in working with different clients.
Spacing Out: More than just daydreaming, clients might become wholly disconnected from the present moment. Their gaze might seem vacant, or they might be unable to track or recall portions of the conversation. Amnesia: Short-term memory loss can be a significant red flag.
Therapists can learn about your emotional state, level of comfort, and underlying psychological issues through your hand movements. It provides additional context to verbal communication.
An example of countertransference is a therapist feeling overly protective or defensive of a client because the client reminds them of their own child.
Examples of Countertransference
Negative countertransference may manifest as offering unsolicited advice, unchecked frustration, and behavior that oversteps client-therapist boundaries. For instance, a therapist may unjustly show aggression toward their client or share too many personal details about themselves.
In line with Gelso and Hayes (25), we view countertransference as being inevitable, for all therapists have unresolved unconscious conflicts and “soft spots” or vulnerabilities that are touched upon in interactions with other human beings.